Bitcoin Breaches 2-month Highs Near $21,500; Crypto Mcap Near $1 trillion!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Top crypto tokens by market cap – Bitcoin price is up 2% trading around $21,200, Ethereum price at about $1580, up about 3%.
2. Global crypto market cap is up about 2% in the past 24 hours, currently at about $995 billion.

CRYPTO MARKET TODAY AT A GLANCE

Read More: Ethereum Price Prediction

TOP CRYPTOS TODAY BY MARKET CAP

The new year has been largely positive for the overall crypto market, having seen green for almost all the days on average. However, the past week has been more than strong thanks to a spectacular rally by the king coin, Bitcoin which has led the crypto markets up to near $1 trillion levels back again. Since early last week, Bitcoin has been performing pretty well, and almost is working as a leader in terms of price appreciation for the overall crypto market and leading the recovery. Bitcoin, in the past 24 hour timeframe has managed to gain a solid 2%, while Ethereum, the altcoin king also managed to gain about 3%.

The overall crypto market cap, for the first time in two months - has breached the $900 billion mark late last week and now is very close to touching the $1 trillion mark! This is happening for the first time since the crash of the FTX crypto exchange collapse that happened in early November 2022. This is a crucial milestone as it would go on to lend even more bullish support to the market as a whole. Cryptos all across the board have been rising ever since the beginning of the year, but with Bitcoin taking the lead two weeks into the new year - we could see some broad base recovery too.

BITCOIN PRICE TODAY

BTC/USD | Source: Tradingview

Bitcoin, after a very long time of more than a year is finally getting back into action. For the first time in over a year, BTC price is taking the lead to pull the overall crypto market cap up along with it. It is able to do so because despite the thousands of cryptos that are still out there, Bitcoin's market cap dominance is still at a hefty 41%. Hence, it is able to command this kind of strength and lead the market up along with itself. Over the weekend, between 13-16 January, BTC price has managed to jump a staggering 12%. This becomes more significant because of the fact that this weekend rally, in one fell swoop has broken out of its two-year low regions and close to breaking out of the consolidation zone of $19,000 to $22,000.

Bitcoin's rally has been somewhat of a technical anomaly since its Relative Strength Index has continued to be in the extremely overbought zone, currently at about 88-89 and is still going strong. While this is a bit concerning, overall positive news from the market, especially the dropping inflations numbers from the US has been promising. A falling US inflation would mean a reduction in the rate of growth in interest rates by the Federal Reserve that has put all asset classes including cryptos under a lot of pressure. BTC price has also broken out of the 200 day moving average and if this rally continues, we could eventually see the formation of a golden crossover of the 50 and 200 DMAs in a few days' time.

Additional Read: Guide To Crypto Tax In India 2023

ETH/USD | Source: Tradingview

Ethereum, which has historically been a better performer in terms of price percentages this time around has been a laggard. While Bitcoin has gained about 29% since the beginning of the year, ETH price has managed to gain only 31.5%, which isn't too much of a lead, especially considering that ETH's market cap is a little less than half of Bitcoin. However, despite that, Ethereum price is much better situated and can rally as soon as the overall market interest shifts from the king coin to altcoins.

The current situation, since the beginning of 2023 looks like the bottoming out of the bear market that raged all through the year of 2022 and we could potentially see a continued recovery from current levels too. Bitcoin is typically always the first indicator of the bottoming out, and will soon be followed by Ethereum and the rest. So while ETH price performance hasn't been too spectacular in the past two weeks, we could see its rally coming in a little later - but it will be pretty strong nonetheless.

Technically, ETH price has managed to breach the immediate trendline resistance (marked in blue) and the 200 day moving average (marked in purple) and hence some more recovery from current levels would only serve to solidify ETH's position. But the $1800 to $2200 region would serve as a resistance based on past year price action as a lot of selling pressures could come in. But if it is able to brave through that, we could see stronger upside going forward.

Prices as on 16 January, 2023.